Summer Night Dreams
Page 1
Summer Night Dreams
Alison May
Published by Alison May, 2021.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
PART 1 | WINTER | Emily | January
Helen
Emily
Alex
Emily
Dominic
Emily
Alex
Emily
Alex
Emily
Dominic
Alex
Emily
PART 2 | SPRING | Dominic | April
Emily
Helen
Emily
Alex
Emily
Emily
Dominic
Emily
Alex
Helen
Dominic
Emily
Dominic
Helen
Alex
Helen
Emily
Emily
Helen
Dominic
Helen
Emily
Alex
Dominic
Emily
Alex
Dominic
Emily
Dominic
Emily
Alex
Emily
Helen
Alex
Emily
Dominic
Helen
Emily
Alex
Emily
Helen
Dominic
Emily
Helen
Alex
Dominic
PART 3 | SUMMER | Helen | Midsummer’s Eve
Emily
Helen
Emily
Alex
Dominic
Alex
Emily
Alex
Emily
Helen
Dominic
Emily
Dominic
Alex
Emily
Helen
Alex
Emily
Dominic
Alex
Helen
Dominic
Emily
Dominic
Emily
Helen
Alex
Emily
PART 4 | WINTER | Helen | Christmas Eve
Emily
Alex
Further Reading: Much Ado About Loving
Also By Alison May
About the Author
For Helen. Thank you for the loan of your good name.
PART 1
WINTER
Emily
January
I’m alone again. I’m walking along the road, towards the bridge. At first there are people all around me, laughing and talking. People I know. My dad and Dominic. And there are cars going along the road. It’s busy and light and bright and safe. But then everything changes, like it always changes. The people stop talking and start pointing and whispering. Pointing at me. I spin around and around looking for a friendly face, but there’s nobody I know any more.
I spin faster and faster and the faces mix and blur, before they disappear entirely, and there’s only one face left. Mum. I lean towards her but she steps away, walking onto the bridge, high above the river and fields below. Whatever I try, I can’t reach her. I can never reach her. I force myself to run towards the bridge, to get there before anything happens.
I’m too late. I’m always too late. And now I’m completely alone. My heart beats faster and faster, and I want to run. I want to run to my mum and beg her to take care of me, but I can’t move. I’m pinned to this spot, always alone.
I open my eyes. The sheet’s wrapped around my legs, like I’ve been trying to kick it away, and I’m covered in a layer of cold, horrible sweat. I force myself to breathe slowly, dragging the air into my lungs. I’ve only had the dream twice this week, the two nights I haven’t stayed at Dom’s. I glance at the clock. Ten to six. It could be worse. I screamed myself awake at three in the morning last night.
I sit up, pulling myself to the top of the bed so I can feel the solidity of the headboard against my back. It’s cold. The central heating hasn’t come on yet, and my skin starts to goosebump in the January air. I draw the duvet up around my shoulders.
I’ve lived in this house my whole life, but when I’m alone the place feels too empty. Things that should be familiar make me nervous. The cupboard, where I found my Christmas presents hidden when I was six, is a murky corner where unknown dangers lurk in the dark. I catch myself pushing doors all the way open when I come into the room, to squash whatever I imagine is hiding behind them.
My mouth is dry, and I need the toilet. In my head, I count the number of paces from here to the door and then along the hall to the bathroom. I think I’ll wait until it gets light.
I stick an arm out into the cold and find my phone on the bedside table. One new email. It’s from Dad. The feeling of connection calms me a little. What’s the latest from Verona going to be? So far all his messages have been about interesting sessions at the conference he’s attending. Ten days of presentations and discussions about the parallels and differences between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment periods in southern Europe. It’s what passes for fun if you’re a history professor, apparently. I haven’t heard from him for three or four days; maybe he’s finally having a holiday.
Emily,
Hope you’re well. I’m having a wonderful time.
Could you do me a favour and send the attached around to everyone in this list? Sorry to ask, but I don’t have all their addresses in my phone, and we don’t want to stay in all day searching for them.
I have a big surprise for you when I get back.
Lots of love,
Dad.
Then there’s a list of people. I open the attachment. It’s a party invitation for the day after he comes home, and somebody has had rather too much fun with the clipart. Not my dad’s style. Thinking about it, having party isn’t my dad’s style either. The surprise is intriguing though. I love presents. I lie back on the bed and try to relax. Something niggles. I open the message again. ... we don’t want to stay in all day searching for them. We? Who on earth is ‘we’?
Helen
Helen closed her eyes. In her imagination she could see him, feel him, almost taste him as he leaned towards her. She savoured every detail, each one so familiar from a million replays of this one perfect moment. The crisp cotton of his plain blue shirt; the breadth of his shoulders; the hint of stubble on his normally clean-shaven jaw; the bright electric blue of his eyes. Her skin flushed hot with the anticipation of ...
‘Helen!’
Her eyes flew open. The kettle in front of her was boiling, sending wisps of steam towards her face. Two mugs, with teabags already sitting in place. She looked around. Emily was standing in the doorway. ‘You were miles away. What were you thinking about?’
Helen turned back to face the kettle. ‘Nothing. Just a daydream.’ She poured the water with a shaking hand, and told herself to be calm. Emily wasn’t a mind reader. She didn’t know who Helen was thinking about. She handed the less chipped of the two mugs to her friend, and watched as Emily topped it up with three spoons of sugar.
They carried their tea upstairs into the spare bedroom. This was the point of Emily’s visit. She was here to help repaint the bedroom before Helen’s new lodger arrived. Emily sat down cross-legged on the floor. Her decorating clothes were straight out of the pages of a magazine interior design feature. The pristine denim dungarees were apparently brand new for the occasion. Her blonde hair was twisted under a bandana, with a few wisps hanging down around her ears. Helen’s shapeless jogging bottoms, paint-stained ‘
Historians can always find a date’ T-shirt and unwashed ponytail were no competition in the decorating style-stakes. Helen took a sip of her tea, before setting her mug down and using a screwdriver to prise open the can of paint.
Emily looked around. ‘This is a really nice room. It’s a shame you have to have a lodger. It would be great as an office.’ Her eyes lit up. ‘Or a nursery.’
Helen bristled. ‘A nursery for whom?’
Emily shrugged. ‘For children.’
Helen shook her head. ‘Given that I’m single and have no intention of having a baby, I thought a lodger made more sense.’ She stirred the paint in the can. ‘Anyway I need the money.’
Her friend didn’t answer. Emily lived with her father in the house she’d grown up in, and worked as his assistant. It wasn’t nice to be nosey, so Helen had never asked, but she suspected that Emily wasn’t overburdened with mundane issues like having to pay rent.
Helen tipped some paint into a roller tray and stood up. Emily was being kind; it wasn’t a particularly nice room. It was small and pokey and the windows had clearly been fitted by trained chimps so there was a permanent draft from under the frame. That wouldn’t be fixed with a fresh coat of paint. There was also a worrying brown mark slowly extending across part of the ceiling. That could be hidden, at least until it seeped through again.
The stepladder was borrowed from a neighbour, which meant Helen wasn’t in a position to complain about its slightly wobbly nature. She balanced her paint tray at the top and climbed up. Emily stayed sitting with her tea on the floor. Helen resisted the urge to flick paint at her head. ‘You could start on one of the other walls.’
Emily glanced absently around the room. She took another sip of tea. ‘I’m so glad you asked me over today. I couldn’t stand it at home.’
Helen had already heard the bare bones of the story, told with rapid fire anxiety and breathless indignation, the second Emily had come through the door. ‘Tell me again. Where did he find her?’
Emily shook her head. ‘I don’t even want to think about it. It’s horrifying. My dad and ...’ she spluttered out of words. ‘My dad and a cocktail waitress. It’s disgusting. He goes away for two weeks and comes back with a cocktail waitress.’
It did sound out of character. Emily’s father was Helen’s boss. He was a comfortable, slightly tweedy, slightly distracted sort of a man. A doting father. A perfectly innocuous boss. Not a man you could easily picture having a steamy holiday romance, let alone bringing that romance back with him and moving her in to the family home. Helen’s inner academic tutted. She was making an assumption. Of course Professor Midsomer might see himself as more than simply someone’s father and someone’s boss.
‘It’s horrible. My dad doesn’t need girlfriends.’
Helen paused. She understood Emily’s squeamishness at the idea of her father having a romantic life. Helen’s own mum was a single parent, and Helen had clear memories of being mortified as a teenager, when she discovered that her mum had been going out on dates. She tried a new tack. ‘Well you’re grown up. Maybe he was lonely now you don’t need him so much.’
Emily found a paintbrush and started wafting paint in the general direction of the wall. Helen winced. Perhaps she could put a wardrobe thereto hide Emily’s efforts. Of course she couldn’t. A wardrobe would cost money. Emily pouted. ‘I do still need him though. And it’s my house. He can’t just move someone into my house.’
Helen didn’t point out that it was very much Professor Midsomer’s house and, as such, he could move in whoever he damn well pleased.
‘And you haven’t met her. She’s mad. Apparently she took him to a crystal healing centre while they were in Italy. Crystal healing?’
Helen stifled a smile. Emily was dead against crystal healing, but was a serial follower of the fashionable diet of the week, so long as the diets never required foregoing the mountains of sugar she laced her tea and coffee with, and the chocolate bar Helen knew she scoffed at her desk part way through most afternoons. To Helen’s mind, crystal healing and fad diets were just different flavours of snake oil. She watched Emily jabbing her paintbrush at the wall. It was too much. Helen clambered down her ladder, grabbed a second roller tray and roller and handed them to her friend. ‘This is better for walls. Just don’t put too much paint on the roller.’
Emily shrugged. ‘I’ve never done decorating before. Dad usually gets somebody in. Why aren’t you getting somebody in?’
Helen shook her head. She was an hourly paid lecturer. That meant she had no permanent contract with the university, and an income that fluctuated between nothing and very little, depending on how many students signed up for the modules she taught. Her pre-credit crunch bank hadn’t seen the pittance she earned as any barrier to providing her with a mortgage. Helen was finding it a growing barrier to paying the mortgage back. ‘Because somebodies cost money. You don’t know what you’re doing, but I can pay you in tea.’
She watched Emily paint for a second. The roller seemed to be helping. ‘Maybe you need to relax a bit about the cocktail waitress. If it’s a holiday romance, it’ll burn out on its own soon enough.’
Emily’s face tensed a little bit, but she didn’t respond.
Helen continued. ‘Anyway, you probably won’t be living there much longer. You were talking about moving in with Dominic, weren’t you?’ She fought to keep her tone light, as if she was interested casually, not in an obsessively-in-love way at all.
‘That’s not the point.’
‘Right.’ Helen climbed back up her ladder. She didn’t care. Dominic could move in with whoever he chose. They were friends. She was friends with Emily. She was friends with Emily’s boyfriend. It was all very straightforward.
‘He’s a bit distracted at the moment anyway.’
‘With his dad?’ Dominic’s dad had been in and out of hospital for months. High blood pressure, a suspected mini-stroke, heart palpitations, chest pain; it was a catalogue of the consequences of a lifetime of sausage, bacon and a fried slice, but no less worrying for its predictability.
Emily stopped painting. ‘I wish you could come to the party tomorrow. I need the moral support.’
‘Isn’t Dominic going?’
‘If he gets back in time. You could come too.’
Helen shook her head. ‘I’m not invited, and anyway, Alex is moving in tomorrow.’
Emily pouted, as she usually did when she didn’t get her own way. ‘You really think it’ll peter out?’
Helen paused. ‘What?’
‘Dad and the cocktail whore.’ The anxiety in Emily’s voice didn’t match the vigour of the language.
Helen nodded. ‘I’m sure it will.’
Emily
‘We’re so pleased for you.’ The woman is clasping my dad’s hand. She’s doing the sympathetic head tilt that I’ve had most of my life to get used to. ‘We worried that you might not find anyone after ...’ Her voice tails off. There’s no need to finish. She means after my mum, but nobody ever mentions her. They just tilt their heads and let the unsaid words hang there in the silence.
The doorbell rings. I yell that I’ll get it and make my escape. The party is suffocating. I’m handing out nibbles and smiling politely, but all the time I’m wondering why nobody else is horrified. It’s like the emperor’s new clothes. Everyone must be thinking that this is crazy, but nobody wants to deal with the social awkwardness of being the one to point it out.
I open the door. Finally a friendly face. Dom. Professor Dominic Collins. I put my arms around his neck and kiss him quickly on the lips. He keeps his arms around my waist.
‘How’s your dad?’
He sighs. ‘Still in hospital, but out of immediate danger, they say.’
‘It’s his heart again?’
Dom nods. ‘And he’s still refusing to talk about surgery. According to him it’s a fuss about nothing.’ He smiles at me. ‘Sorry. Anyway I’m here. What’s tonight in aid of?’
I haven’t told Dom t
he story of the cocktail whore. I started to on the phone last night, but he was on his mobile at his mum’s house and I could hear her in the background muttering about him frying his brain with that infernal gizmo.
He takes his coat off and hangs it in the hallway. He’s wearing the traditional pre-middle aged academic uniform of trousers and shirt, but no tie or jacket. It’s a look that implies that he is really wearing a jacket, but he’s just taken it off at the moment. Dom’s tall. He used to row when he was younger. He’s still got big broad shoulders under his plain clothes. I like that. It makes him feel solid. He turns back to me. ‘So?’
I try to form the words, but my brain has moved through anger and seems to be trying denial. In the end I shake my head. ‘You’ll see. Come on.’
He follows me into the kitchen, and I find him a beer, and pour another glass of wine for myself. ‘We’d better go through.’
Dom arrived late, so the soiree is already in full swing. The living room is full of Dad’s friends, most of them current or former colleagues, standing in huddles and chit-chatting like the sky hasn’t just fallen in. They don’t understand. To them he’s just the boss, but to me, he’s Dad. It’s me and him. It’s always been me and him, ever since Mum ... I slam the door that’s twitching open in my head hard shut ... ever since Mum went away.
My dad’s doing the rounds shaking hands, engaging in small talk, making introductions. I watch him for a second before I turn my attention to Her. Tania Highpole. Dad’s surprise from Verona. She’s tanned. I have no idea what the weather is like in Verona in January, but I’m telling myself it’s fake. Her hair’s a sort of golden blonde, which can’t be natural either. She might have been a real blonde once, but not any more. I’m not even sure how old she is. Younger than Dad, but I bet she’s nowhere near as young as she’d like everyone to think.
Dominic leans forward. ‘Who’s the woman with your dad?’
I still can’t say it. If I say it, it will be as if I’m accepting that she’s here and that all the stuff she said last night, while she was sitting in our kitchen, drinking our coffee, is actually happening.
Dad glances over and catches sight of Dom. Dad approves terribly of Dom, although I’ve never really been out with anyone he disapproved of. They’re coming over. Dad shakes Dom by the hand. ‘Thank you for coming. Let me introduce you.’